


Sasuke and the 'Seven Leaves'

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Bickering, Comment Fic, Exposition, Gen, IN SPACE!, Military Science Fiction, Prompt Fic, Space Battles, Space Pirates, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-23
Updated: 2011-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-17 04:32:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2296769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Uchiha Sasuke joined the Confederated Space Force to hunt pirates, keep order, and prevent tragedies like the one that claimed his entire clan.  But military life wasn't quite what he was expecting, and then everything went sideways when he found himself a prisoner on the <em>Seven Leaves</em>, a colony rebel ship...</p>
<p>In other words, welcome to <em>Naruto</em> IN SPACE!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sasuke and the 'Seven Leaves'

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hungrytiger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hungrytiger/gifts).



> This is a comment!fic for [hungrytiger11](http://hungrytiger11.livejournal.com), in response to the prompt: _I'd love to see anything Naruto so long as it's in an AU setting (your choice)._ The setting I chose is from [an AU summary meme response](http://edenfalling.dreamwidth.org/551466.html?thread=1409322#cmt1409322) I wrote three weeks ago, for [branchandroot](http://branchandroot.dreamwidth.org).
> 
> (By the way, if anyone knows how to put italics in AO3 fic titles, please tell me! I would like to format the ship's name correctly.)

Sasuke is not, according to every commander he's ever had, a good soldier. Not because he's bad at fighting, or even because he's bad as a tech support officer, which is nominally his job aboard Captain Orochimaru's ship -- because he's _not_ bad at either of those things, dammit -- but because no matter how hard he tries, he can't quite fit in to the smoothly oiled machinery of the space force. Some of that's down to prejudice -- the way the inner system views colonials is patronizing at best and pathologically bigoted at worst, and Sasuke doesn't have the patience to non-violently educate idiots on the thousand ways they're wrong -- but mostly it's just a personality clash. He has a problem with authority figures, as Lt. Commander Yakushi likes to say with his deceptively gentle smile.

This is why Sasuke is in the brig when the _CSF Cobra_ is attacked.

The hull is breached early on -- alarms are still whooping and the red emergency lights glare from the upper corners of the narrow corridor he can see through the tiny window in the brig's airtight door. The artificial gravity holds out longer until something judders through the metal and ceramic skeleton and shell of the ship and everything goes nearly weightless, the emergency generators routing power to life support and leaving only enough gravity to keep the floor oriented tentatively "down" instead of letting everything float free.

Sasuke should be fighting off the boarding party -- both pirates and the outer colony rebels always try for salvage instead of the clean destruction from a distance the space force favors. Failing that, he should be in the engine rooms or wired in to the network, helping route power where it's needed and direct the marines into position to catch the invaders in an ambush crossfire. He's good at that. His teams always win simulations when he's allowed access to the system so he can play scout and sniper.

But no. He's stuck in a tiny two-by-three meter room, completely fucking useless, just because he decked a grinning bastard for calling him the captain's catamite. He isn't! Sasuke doesn't even fucking _like_ Captain Orochimaru. It's not his fault the brass think he makes a good poster boy, the living symbol of their mythical "obedient colonist," and keep roping him into missions he doesn't have seniority for. It's not his fault the captain thinks it's funny to pretend the orders come from him instead of sector command back on Ceres.

Sasuke is upside-down, distracting himself by trying to balance on a single fingertip, when someone blows the airlock to the prison corridor. He can't hear the explosion directly, but the shudder of stressed steel is much closer and more violent, and he shoves himself into the air to look out through the brig's window, bracing himself on the narrow frame around the triple-layer glass.

He stares upside-down into a blank, polarized facemask, which retracts to reveal startled blue eyes. The blond invader -- a rebel, judging by the patch with two ringed planets crudely pasted to the left upper arm of his blinding orange tightsuit -- says, to himself, "The fuck?" Which Sasuke can't hear, of course, but he taught himself to read lips when he was bored at the academy and anyway, the blond's expression speaks for itself.

Sasuke lifts his right hand from the window frame, still bracing himself in midair with his left hand, and mimes shooting a gun at the idiot outside. He bares his teeth to make the gesture absolutely clear. _Let me out and I'll kill you, asshole._ Nobody attacks his ship and lives.

Not after Itachi.

So of course the blond blows the lock and kicks in the door.

The last thing Sasuke hears before the debris knocks him unconscious is an annoyed tenor voice grumbling, "Aw, fuck, now I gotta remember where they keep the spare suits on these overgrown ant-traps."

\---------------

When he wakes, he's strapped to a gurney, the light hitting his closed eyes is the yellow-white of faux sunlight instead of dangerous orange-red, the contented purr of a well-maintained ship thrums gently in his bones, and gravity is back to the usual 75% of Earth standard -- a compromise between generator power, the evolutionary requirements of human bodies, and the convenience of getting extra bang to every step. Sasuke grew up in this gravity, born to space like all the Uchiha were. This is more natural to him than the aching pull of Earth, and the hum of the ship is like the comfort of his parents' arms.

Clearly something is wrong.

"He's awake," a woman says. A hand touches his cheek, bare skin to skin. "Hey. You. Stop shamming. I'm no landlord medic, but I can read brainwave patterns as well as anyone. You're not even feeling fuzzy. Eyes open, time to face the music."

Sasuke opens his eyes.

Six rebels stare back, jammed shoulder to shoulder in the tiniest excuse for a med-bay he's seen since he was eight years old. The leftmost one is tall with prematurely gray hair, a cyborg implant in his left eye, and some kind of mechanical contraption over his mouth and chest. Probably a breath regulator; cloned organs are expensive in the outer colonies. The man next to him wears an interface headset over his shaggy black hair; his face is nearly as hard to read despite being uncovered. They wear rank insignia marking them as a captain and a commander, respectively.

The other four are younger: the blue-eyed blond who kidnapped Sasuke, a quiet-looking woman with long black hair and white contact lenses (some kind of VR interface, Sasuke bets; she must be a computer tech), a skinny man with black hair and the hacked-up clothes that say he spends a lot of time around overheating generators, and a woman with pink hair (dye or gene-mod? hard to say) who grins, hard-edged, and says, "Good boy." She presses a couple points on a remote in her left hand and the straps holding Sasuke's chest and legs retract. His wrists are still cuffed to the rails, though, he discovers when he tries to move. There's just enough give for him to sit up, not nearly enough to stand or reach more than a foot from the gurney.

"Who are you, what do you want, and why am I alive?" Sasuke says.

The pink-haired woman's grin widens. "We're your people, who you betrayed when you joined the landlords and their corrupted dogs. We want you to betray them in turn. And you're alive because traitors are so much less politically useful than martyrs, don't you think?"

"Lt. Haruno, play nice," the gray-haired captain says, his voice surprisingly expressive and fluid despite the electronic overtone that says he's subvocalising into a speech program.

The pink-haired woman -- Haruno -- shrugs. She doesn't look even the faintest bit apologetic.

Sasuke shrugs back. "You are not the legally mandated government, nor did your so-called fleet do anything to protect my clan in our time of need. I will not roll over and play dog for you. And if you think the brass and their propaganda hacks can't make diamonds out of anything, you're sadly delusional. But do try. I can't wait to see you all on trial when the space force catches up to you."

All six smile at his words, and the blond outright laughs. "Yeah, that'll be the day," he says. "Their ships suck ass. The only point having anything that big is to haul cargo -- you can fit all the weapons and power you need on a frame a third the size, if that, and that gives you speed and maneuverability to boot. Hey, why do you think we get away every time? Why do you think the _pirates_ get away? Aside from them being in bed with the fucking landlords, I mean. You did know that your snake-freak captain's in league with Akatsuki, right?"

"Lt. Uzumaki, one thing at a time," the captain says, sounding long-suffering.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," the blond grumbles, as if he hasn't just accused Sasuke of inadvertently working to help his family's murderers. "It's totally true, though."

Sasuke mimes a gun and snarls.

"All right, that's enough," Haruno says. "Only I'm allowed to disturb my patients. The rest of you, out. Go on, shoo." The captain, the commander, the engineer, and the tech officer leave easily. The blond -- Uzumaki -- lingers a moment, miming a gun right back at Sasuke and then pretending to blow smoke off his fingertip. "Naruto, knock it off," Haruno says, and shoves him out the door. It slides shut behind him, sealing airtight.

Haruno turns back to Sasuke, her smile suddenly softer, though still rather unnerving around the eyes. "Alone at last, my pretty!" she says, and laughs. "Oh, your face. Calm down, what do you think I am, as bad as mister let's-play-surgeon Yakushi? I promise you, people in my med-bay don't vanish or come out insane. They just get better." She looks down at her remote, frowns, and taps a few places. "I think it's time for you to get some proper sleep, now that I'm not worried about you slipping into a long-term coma. So enjoy your painkiller and sedative and have pleasant dreams."

Sasuke fights the drowning whirl of sleep, but there's only so much willpower can do against chemical assault.

As the med-bay fades into sepia-toned blur, he thinks he feels a warm hand on his forehead and hears a voice humming the lullaby his mother used to sing when he was very small -- a silly mnemonic about the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and a little ship that visited them all -- but that's just wishful thinking, an old and familiar ache.

He dreams of blood and death, as always.

**Author's Note:**

> I later wrote down some more thoughts about the ficlet and the setting in general as part of a [DVD commentary meme](http://edenfalling.livejournal.com/636367.html?thread=2271951#t2271951), if you are interested.


End file.
